The wedding!

This morning I dreamed I was teaching a yoga class. It wasn’t me-with-lots-of-yoga-training, it was just me, right now, as I am. It was yoga for everyday aches and pains, the sort of thing I get in my wrists and in my neck/shoulders from decoupaging and computer use. I went to the first class and I set my mat down where I usually put it. Then I realized I was the teacher, and had to go to the front of the room! The first class had a good showing. I asked everyone, “How many of you are here because of specific body areas?” Almost everyone raised their hands, and I asked them to just call out their answers. It turned out to be a good class. I made everyone do un-yogic things, like sprints, but they liked it. The regulars in the class gained more body awareness, strength, and flexibility for their everyday lives. 🙂

My cousin Alex married his lovely Angela last night, and it was the most wonderful wedding we’ve ever been to. It was the perfect mix of tradition — especially reverence and gratitude toward family — and their very own spin on things — including a photobooth with costumes, and a fabulous dance floor — and it was very much their night and their party. We had a grand time. They’re our closest friends who’ve gotten married, and the first other family members who are about our age. I actually cried for the first time at a wedding. Angela moved to LA about two years ago, so we became very good friends with her and Alex (and they bought our couch when we left!). It gave us great pleasure and joy to see them coming together in such a beautiful way, knowing that their journey together will only get better with time. They are our favorite couple besides ourselves, and we’re so, so happy for them. 🙂 I should also add that they are a fantastically good-looking couple, as you’ll see if you flip through this slideshow — in which they look positively plain compared to how they looked last night.

Unfortunately, I also got badly sunburned at the ceremony. 😦 I was an idiot and was too nervous over my reading to put on sunblock, even though I was offered it multiple times by multiple people, and knew I should. Now I have an enormous angry-looking red area over my décolletage that ends in exactly the shape of my neckline, and I itch on my face and arms. But the reading went beautifully. I read this passage, chosen by the couple, with a couple of additions and deletions as we saw fit. Erik and I had fun marking up the passage — it was like annotating a piano piece for performance, or a speech for speech & debate! We figured out where emphasis should fall, how to read certain phrases, etc etc. I was nervous about the reading because I hate microphones and didn’t get the chance to rehearse exactly where I’d stand (long story, but the rehearsal ended up being more of a talk-through than a run-through), but the ceremony was so intimate and lovely that I lost my nervousness when I got there… until I realized I would be standing right next to Angela and Alex, close enough to touch them. This unnerved me a lot when I got up there because I had to speak directly to them — in their faces really — but that made it so much more personal and meaningful. A lot of the relatives thought I’d actually written the speech myself. 🙂 So I’m thankful I was able to help make their day special. It was such a wonderful, fun wedding!! My weekend has left me feeling replete with love and happiness.